Abstract
These are the opening lines the Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns, edited by James Ballantine and published in May 1859.2 Ballantine’s chronicle records a mind-boggling total of 872 celebratory events, which had taken place in city halls, corn exchanges, local meeting halls, hotels, and private houses on 25 January earlier that year. Flanked by a flurry of centenary publications, there were more than 600 of such meetings in Scotland (a list is given in McKie 1881, 185–200). The others were spread across the British Isles, the United States, and the colonies, especially Canada and Australia, with only one event mentioned in continental Europe (in Copenhagen) .3
The celebration of the hundredth birthday of Robert Burns, on the 25th day of January, in the year 1859, presented a spectacle unprecedented in the history of the world.
This chapter is a shortened and revised version of Rigney 2011.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Works cited
Cookson, Gillian; 2003. The Cable (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus).
Crawford, Robert; 2009. The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography (London: Jonathan Cape).
Crawford, Robert, and Christopher Maclachlan (eds); 2009. The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose o f Robert Burns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Culler, Jonathan; 2003. ‘Anderson and the Novel’, in Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson, ed. J. Culler and P. Sheah (London: Routledge), 29–52.
Davis, Leith; 1998. Acts of Union: Scotland and the Literary Negotiation of the British Nation 1707–1830 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Davis, Leith; 2004. ‘At “Sang About”: Scottish Song and the Challenge to British Culture’, in Scotland and Borders of Romanticism, ed. L. Davis, I. Duncan, and J. Sorensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 188–203.
Foulkes, Richard; 1984. The Shakespeare Tercentenary of 1864 (London: Society for Theatre Research).
Francfort, Didier; 2004. Le chant des nations: Musiques et cultures en Europe 1870–1914 (Paris: Hachette).
Goodwillie, Edward; 1911. The World’s Memorials of Robert Burns (Detroit: Waverley Publishing).
Gunn, Simon; 2000. The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City 1840–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Hugill, Peter; 1999. Global Communications since 1844: Geopolitics and Technology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Kidd, Colin; 1999. ‘Sentiment, Race and Revival: Scottish Identities in the Aftermath of Enlightenment’, in A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c.1750–c.1850, ed. L. Brockliss and D. Eastwood (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 110–26.
Klenke, Dietmar; 1998. Der ‘Singende deutsche Mann’: Gesangvereine und deutsches Nationalbewusstsein von Napoleon bis Hitler (Münster: Waxmann).
Leask, Nigel; 2011. ‘“Their Groves O’ Sweet Myrtles”: Robert Burns and the Scottish Colonial Experience’, in Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. M. Pittock (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 172–88.
Leerssen, Joep; 1996. Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (Cork: Cork University Press).
Leerssen, Joep; 2002. Hidden Ireland, Public Sphere (Galway: Arlen House).
Mackay, James A.; 1985. The Burns Federation 1885–1985 (Kilmarnock: The Burns Federation).
Makdisi, Saree; 1998. Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Marvin, Carolyn; 1988. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electrical Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
McGinn, Clark; 2011. ‘Vehement Celebrations: The Global Celebration of the Burns Supper since 1801’, in Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. M. Pittock (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 189–203.
McGuirk, Carol; 1987. ‘Scottish Hero, Scottish Victim: Myths of Robert Burns’, in The History of Scottish Literature, ed. A. Hook (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press), 2:219–38.
McGuirk, Carol; 1997. ‘Haunted by Authority: Nineteenth-Century American Constructions of Robert Burns’, in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority, ed. R. Crawford (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 136–58.
McKie, James; 1881. The Bibliography of Robert Burns with Biographical and Bibliographical Notes, and Sketches of Burns Clubs, Monuments and Statues (Kilmarnock: James McKie).
McVie, John; 1959. The Burns Federation: A Bi-Centenary Review (Kilmarnock: Kilmarnock Standard).
Mergenthal, Sylvia; 2011. ‘Burns and European Identities’, in Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. M. Pittock (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 63–72.
Moretti, Franco; 1998. Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900 (London: Verso).
Patten, Eve; 2004. Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts).
Picker, John; 2008. ‘Atlantic Cable’, Victorian Review 43.1: 34–8.
Pittock, Murray; 2011. ‘Introduction: Global Burns’, in Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. M. Pittock (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 13–24.
Pittock, Murray, and Pauline McKay; 2012. ‘Highland Mary: Objects and Memories’, Romanticism 18.2: 191–203.
Richards, Jeffrey; 2001. Imperialism and Music: Britain 1876–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Richards, Thomas; 1990. The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Rigney, Ann; 2011. ‘Embodied Communities: Commemorating Robert Burns, 1859’, Representations 115: 71–101.
Rigney, Ann; 2012. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Thompson, John B.; 1995. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Cambridge: Polity).
Trumpener, Katie; 1997. Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Tyrell, Alex; 2005. ‘Paternalism, Public Memory and National Identity in Early Victorian Scotland: The Robert Burns Festival at Ayr in 1844’, History: A Quarterly Magazine and Review for the Teacher, the Student and the Expert 90.297: 42–61.
Unverhau, Henning; 2000. Gesang, Feste und Politik: Deutsche Liedertafeln, Sängerfeste, Volksfeste und Festmähler und ihre Bedeutung für das Entstehen eines nationalen und politischen Bewussteins in Schleswig-Holstein 1840–1848 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang).
Vance, Michael; 2012. ‘Burns in the Park: A Tale of Three Monuments’, in Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture, ed. S. Alker, L. Davis, and H. Nelson (London: Ashgate), 209–32.
Vasileva, Larisa; 2004. ‘“For a’ that”, or Robert Burns Days in Moscow’, Soviet Literature 8: 173–6.
Vid, Natalia; 2004. ‘Political-Ideological Translations of Robert Burns’ Poetry in the Soviet Union’, British and American Studies / Revista de Studii Britanice si Americane 14: 343–51.
Vlach, Robert; 1965. ‘Robert Burns through Russian Eyes’, Studies in Scottish Literature 2: 152–62.
Weeks and Cochran; 1859. Celebration of Burns’ Centenary, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 25th January, 1859. Reported by Messrs. Weeks and Cochran (Halifax, NS: By order of the Committee).
Whatley, Christopher A.; 2010. ‘Memorialising Burns: Dundee and Montrose Compared’, Centre for Robert Burns Studies, University of Glasgow, http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_183298_en.pdf; created/last modified October 2010; accessed January 2014.
Whatley, Christopher A.; 2011a. ‘“It is said that Burns was a Radical”: Contest, Concession and the Political Legacy of Robert Burns’, Journal of British Studies 50.3: 639–66.
Whatley, Christopher A.; 2011b. ‘Robert Burns, Memorialisation and the “Heart-Beatings” of Victorian Scotland’, in Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. M. Pittock (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 224–60.
Williams, Gareth; 2003. Valleys of Song: Music and Society in Wales 1840–1914 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Ann Rigney
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rigney, A. (2014). Burns 1859. In: Leerssen, J., Rigney, A. (eds) Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412140_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412140_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48945-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-41214-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)